Official selection
Venice International Film Festival 2022
Honors
Queer Lion Award, Venice Film Festival 2023
Director
Alex Schaad
Writer
Alex Schaad, Dimitrij Schaad
Cast
Jonas Dassler, Mala Emde, Dimitrij Schaad, Thomas Wodianka, Maryam Zaree
contact
Kino Lorber
Official website
“A body-swap film with a difference… takes a clever concept and develops it into a witty, provocative exploration of identity, gender fluidity, sexuality and the pursuit of happiness”– Allan Hunter, SCREEN
“Unexpected and moving… touches on disturbing questions about the self and the origins of love”– Elena Lazic, CINEUROPA
“Truly stunning. Intoxicating and dizzying, SKIN DEEP is the sort of film that sneakily drills deep to the emotional core, connecting with the viewer at their soul”– Kat Hughes,THN
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to inhabit another body? To see with new eyes and feel with new skin? To experience things with a different chemical balance? A communal summer retreat set on a remote island provides young couple Leyla and Tristan with the opportunity to experience the world in a new light. Guided by Stella , a young girl in an old man's body, they embark on a body-swapping journey with Fabienne and Mo, another couple who visits the commune yearly. With it come the thrills of discovery, the joys of experience, the complications of life choices and genetic heredity, and long-buried longings coming to light.
Winner of the Queer Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, and garnering critical acclaim, Alex Schaad's SKIN DEEP is an intimate, character-driven science fiction and romance film which eschews easy laughs for genuine feelings, featuring a praiseworthy cast which deftly balances a rainbow of roles as bodies are swapped and mannerisms are picked up with seeming ease. It asks of the viewer to explore the questions of experience and identity with vulnerability and understanding. The film seeks to deepen the bonds that bind people to each other, with a life-affirming message, all while acknowledging the neural diversity we inhabit. Its original title, AUS MEINER HAUT, fittingly expresses the characters' yearning to live out of their skin. Special mention to cinematographer Ahmed El Nagar, who paints an intimate view of the protagonists as they go through their journey of self-dis/re/covery by keeping to a handheld style, pulling back every so often to take in the greater landscape, leaving Richard Ruzicka’s layered musical tapestry to round out the soundscape, allowing the actors’ lines and actions to breathe, but coming in like a wave as their personal dramas unfold. – Moustafa Chamli
Showings
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Take Care of My Cat
Jeong Jae-eun
A year after graduating, five inseparable girls who had begun drifting apart are brought back together by a stray cat, in Jeong Jae-eun’s classic coming-of-age debut.
When Tomorrow Dies
Larry Kent
Kent’s ground-breaking 1965 film, the story of a housewife imprisoned by her domestic world, is uncommonly perceptive about the contradictory condition facing the independent woman in a sexist society.
People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind
Yurina Kaneko
Sophomore university student Nanamori joins the Plushies Club, where he is encouraged to discuss his feelings with stuffed animals, in Yurina Kaneko’s gently provocative, gender-conscious youth film.